CYCLONIC STORMS

Otago Witness, Issue 3336, 20 February 1918, Page 24

CYCLONIC STORMS

(Fbom Odb Own Cohhebpondekt.) SYDNEY, February 6. There is an extraordinary prevalence of violent cyclonic storm's just now. Last week, Central Queensland suffered a devastating visitation, and the town of Mackay was wrecked. The latest estimate puts the damage in and around Mackay at £1,600.000. On Saturday, a cyclone visited South Melbourne, coming absolutely unheralded at the end of some hours of muggy and oppressive heat, and although it lasted only, 10 or 15 minutes, it caused damage that' a rough estimate places at £150,000. The storm came swooping over the water at about 6 o'clock, just when the beaches were crowded, and it struck New Brighton, Melbourne's most southerly seaside resort. In suddenness and violence,_ the phenomenon was without precedent in the usually temperate State of Victoria. Some remarkable temperatures have been recorded in Melbourne this summer,- however, while Sydney weather has held little more than a hint of the tropics. When the wind came, the thousands on the Brighton waterfront scampered madly for shelter. But buildings were crashing about their ears even as they ran. The roof was wrenched off the baths, the big Ozone Refreshment Rooms collapsed, and the railway station was so torn about that traffic was stopped for several hours. But that was only the preliminary puff of, the cyclone. The whirling wind passed oh to the residential quarter of Brighton, and enormous damage was done. Rooms were demolished wholesale, and there' were innumerable miraculous escapes. Instances are reported of residents leaving rooms which, a moment later, had disappeared. A five-year-old girl, hearing the roar of the storm, ran into another room. Immediately after the room she had left collapsed, a mass of wreckage. The four-year-old daughter of Lieutenant-colonel Kendall, who is at the front, was at home with a servant when the wind lifted the roof off the house and dashed the walls in. The little girl received a compound fracture of the leg, ~ but was saved from further injury by her companion. The Methodist Church was entirely wrecked, while the Roman Catholic Churoh was badly damaged. Scarcely a street escaped damage, and some streets suffered severely. Beyond the suburb, the .track of the storm can be followed by demolished buildings and fences. The storm did not reach the city proper, but whirled out over the sea again. The numerous yachts out on tho bay suffered much damage. There wore two fatalities. A young Sydney man, out in an open boat, was thrown into the water and drowned, and a youth, in one of the main streets, was decapitated by a piece of flying roofing iron. Many persons were injured, but the number of deaths, considering the violence of the storm, is surprisingly low. i The Weather Bureau kept track of this cyclone, and on Monday afternoon caused considerable excitement in Sydney by announcing that it was,working up the coast and approaching the city from the south. It had lost its sting, however; shrinking Sydney experienced nothing more than a strong wind and heavy rain.